Film director Agnieszka in Man of Marble (Poland, 1976)
EAST EUROPEAN LITERATURE AND FILM
Professor Gordana Crnković
TA: Taylor Eftimov
C LIT 357 A & SLAVIC 490 A
(If one of these two sections is full,
please enroll in the other. This is the same class!)
Reviewing the novel The Door by Hungarian Magda Szabó, writer Claire Messud remarked that “it’s astonishing that this masterpiece should have been essentially unknown to English-language readers for so long, a realization that raises once again the question of what other gems we’re missing out on.”[i] She added that The Door “altered the way I understand my own life.”[ii]
Customarily lumped together under the name of “East Europe”--and not always or even often thought of when one thinks of "Europe"-- the large eastern part of Europe produced vibrant, diverse, unique, and often unexpectedly inspiring literature and cinema. This course introduces students to masterpieces of literature and film by Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Yugoslav and post-Yugoslav, and Baltic authors. We will focus mostly on works created during the region’s communist or socialist era in the second half of the twentieth century, in societies that were profoundly different from those in the West. While some of the countries of that “Second World’s” Eastern Europe are no longer on the map (Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia), their literature and cinema continue to excite and surprise with the variety of their concerns, their aesthetic excellence, and their relevance to our world today.
Requirements: readings and film viewings, journal entries on our readings and films, 3 short quizzes. No prerequisites. Please don't hesitate to contact Prof. Crnković if you need more information (crnkovic@uw.edu).
The class will be conducted in person.
[i] Claire Messud, “Fierce Devotions,” New York Times Book Review, February 8, 2015, p. 12.
[ii] Ibid.